Word: film
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...story, it draws you in, holds your attention and forces you to become emotionally involved. It was not an easy movie to write or direct, but Robert Benton has succeeded in treading the fine line between washed-out soap opera and documentary. The result is a rare treat--a film that does not preach but makes its point, a film that makes you feel but does not jerk, a film that does not pretend to have all the answers...
Harvard already grants independent study credit for music lessons, and the Visual and Environmental Studies Department offers courses in photography and film...
...onto the symbolic side. But the characters refuse to give any indication that they relate to each other naturally, removing the audience from any kind of closeness to their humanity, and hence their horror. Skolimowski stopes just short of delivering believable characters, and hence just short of a satisfying film...
...dreamworld versus the real world. Invariably, as happened with Peter Weir's The Last Wave, the characters are sacrificed in order to explore the realm of the imagination. Yet however fascinating this theme might be to a director, it must be remembered that the "normal" characters in the film are the springboard into this mystical world. If such characters are one-dimensional, the audience is left with no horizon line against which to judge the increasingly strange happenings...
...finally, Skolimowski's film is frustrating because he attempts to duplicate the stream-of-consciousness style of the Robert Graves story from which this screenplay was adapted. In a literary context, steam of consciousness can be effective often because it can be reviewed. If indeed Finnegan's Wake is a masterpiece, it is rarely recognized as such on the first reading. It takes many re-readings in order to follow the elusive psychological themes. Indeed, in film, the only way to give an audience this "review" is to leave signposts, cinematic Hansel and Gretel breadcrumbs in an attempt to give...